Link: http://www.new.facebook.com/home.php#/pages/Sydney-Australia/Chinese-Noodle-Restaurant/7778269335?ref=s

You can just picture this hole in the wall, crammed in dumpling shop being in the next Seinfeld. It's famed for it's bizarre yet cheap menu: Chicken Spring Pancakes anyone? Or how about the combination noodles - basically an Asian Spaghetti bolognese. Why not try the meat pastry - like a northern chinese pork quesadila? But the real reason you come here is the amazing home made dumplings (i'm a rebel - i like the steamed vegetarian), and well, the kitsch vineyard decor. And the fact you're so crammed in so close to your dining companions it's basically a second-base-fest with your co-workers.

A lot of people, myself included, believe winter sucks in Sydney. There's no fireplaces, we're not fashionably equipped and most of our houses and apartments have paper-thin walls. Our cafes and pubs, with their spacious outdoor areas, balconies and harbour views, are also arguably built for the summer months. So we generally spend winter at home freezing.

Then, on what is meant to be the coldest weekend of the year, you get a beautifully sunny 23 degree day (thanks global warming), warmer than many parts of Europe and America right now during their summer months.

Thanks Al Gore!

Say what you will about the road closures, flag waving tourists and very un-Australian outward displays of public religion, I'm taking inspiration from the thousands of visiting pilgrims and like them, I'm not paying for public transport this week.

Free public transport? Hallelujah!

Okay, so I'm biased. I've done some volunteer video editing on the Underbely festival the past two years and i'm a huge fan. Melbourne has long been considered Australia's home to the arts and creative expression, but the Underbelly Festival (held annually at Carriageworks) certainly gives Melbourne a run for its money in terms of creativity on offer and coldness of temperature inside the venue.

It works like this: 40+ collectives comprising of 250+ artists work for 2 weeks on various new collaboations that premier during the 2 day festival. The festival is a visual and aural orgy, and in typical Sydney fashion - there's way too much to do, too many places to be and not enough time. For those cash-obsessed Sydneysiders who devalue both art and artists, i dare you to come down and not be blown away and/or inspired by the sheer amount of hard work, unique collaborative process and sheer creative thinking that goes into the dozens of various, indescribable art projects crammed into two weeks work. Oh and there's beer and most of Newtown there too.

Underbelly is on this weekend, July 12-13 at Carriageworks. Tickets thru ticketbastard or on the door.
for more info: underbelly.com.au.

Okay, so they used to be $5 but these days $7 is the going rate for a decent pub steak. And if you pay more than $10 you're obviously a tourist.

The Forresters in Surry Hills started the $5 Steak craze, seeing it as a way of getting people in during mid-week winter nights, and they put a giant model cow on the awning to let people know. And it worked a treat - the pub was regularly packed out with budget-minded carnivores. But alas it didn't last. Soon every pub was offering cheap steaks (or even FREE in the case of the Glebe Excelsior every Wednesday with the purchase of a $10 jug of Coopers). Forresters, packed out with uni students, lowered the quality of the steaks, then discontinued it all together.

But the tradition lives on, and here are my current two favourite steak-based haunts for when i'm feeling low on iron midweek.

1. The Shakespeare in Surry Hills. Okay so it's $10 and can be variable, but generally huge and hearty.
2. The Great Southern on George St in Chinatown. $7. For when you're sick of laksa and pho, go a Chinatown steak.

And where are your favourite steaks?

Seventy-six years young, it's hard to imagine what sheer majesty and awe this structure must have inspired upon its opening in 1932. Even crossing it today, by car, foot or train is still a marvellous experience, particularly at sunset, watching yachts darting about the glistening dappled light on the harbour.

Lately however, the bridge has changed - particularly for pedestrians. Those who cross along the highway level are now encased in a cage-like structure. Put in as an anti-terrorist measure since the September 11 attacks, i see this Cold War-like steel casing as actually making people less safe. If a bomber or gunman now runs along the pedestrian walkway causing havoc, pedestrians now have no escape. Yeah, good one - whoever did that! It's so Cold War-esque some fashionista clothing label recently shot a magazine shoot that purposefully resembled a divided, David Bowie-Heroes era-Berlin that it just shot on a cloudy day with no extra dressing necessary.

The top of the bridge, which according to my older anarchist friends, used to be a place where you could both secretly have sex in the outdoors and/or wheel up a shopping trolley of beer tinnies, is now a commercialised, stock-market listed tourist attraction called BridgeClimb. Now I have done the Climb and thought it was awesome, but being a Libertarian anarchist at heart, i think the top of the coathanger should still be open to drunken student members of the public to fornicate and drink piss. So vote for me to be Premier of New South Wales.